About the work

The English author and garden designer Vita Sackville-West loved zinnia and could hardly imagine a garden without the pretty composites. Introduced to Europe from Mexico at the end of the 18th century, the zinnia was also planted in the Botanical Gardens in Berlin in 1808 following stations in Spain and England, spread rapidly and found a home in German cottage gardens.
Like Sackville-West, whose residence in Sissinghurst is still admired even today each year by thousands of visitors, Emy Schmidt-Rottluff also loved the simple beauties with their brilliant blossoms. It is said that it is only for this reason that the artist painted the flowers so often.
The "Zwei Zinnien" were created in 1960, in a work phase in which the still life once again became predominant in his work. The artist placed the red and orange blossoms against a wet-on-wet, rose-coloured background. In contrast with the earlier, radiantly colourful and highly expressive paintings, the watercolours of the late years are distinguished by a certain painterly reserve: their colourfulness is more subtle, the tones more broken and the palette often supplemented with black. The formal conception of the paintings becomes more sober and stringent - a development that may have done justice to the simple zinnia with their straight stems.